"The Potemkin Economy"

"The Potemkin Economy"

by John Wilder

"Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski is famous mostly for what he didn’t do, but more about that in a minute. What Potemkin did do, starting in 1774, was conquer most of what is southern Ukraine, the Crimea, Moldova, and Catherine the Great a bunch of times. The land he mostly took from the Ottoman Empire, but Catherine seems to have invited the conquest. And apparently, Grigory didn’t do it right, because she made him do it again. And again. I mean a bunch of times. Catherine had a succession of lovers that would put Kamala’s body count in 1992 to shame. Okay, the summer of 1992. Okay. August of 1992. Okay, August 11, 1992. By noon

But when Potemkin wasn’t kicking Ottoman butt or... well, the other thing, what he did do was found city after city along the Black Sea coast. You just might have heard of Kherson? Yup. Potemkin founded and named that city. He was even buried there until Putin dug him up and took him back to Russia recently. It’s certain he wasn’t the last Russian to retreat. But mostly, we remember Potemkin for the phrase Potemkin Village. Where did that phrase come from?

Catherine the Great, somewhere between lovers, decided to have a Lord of the Rings-type trip to go see what Potemkin was up to down south, and maybe have Potemkin put something in Mount Doom, if you know what I mean. That was based on the idea that Potemkin had a lot of the Novorossiyan (approximately the southern area that Putin held before the Russians began advancing to the rear last month) villages built and rebuilt so that he could fool Catherine about how prosperous the area was.

Well, not really. First of all, Potemkin didn’t have to impress Catherine, they’d known each other forever by this point, and she really liked him even though whenever they weren’t together they were boffing enough other people to make Paris Hilton blush. What everyone does agree on is that Potemkin had folks paint some of the village buildings, and they did build a few fake ones, but those were mainly to show Catherine what the area would look like.

So, despite personal bravery, solid administration, building an entire fleet, and being a diplomat worthy of any of today’s age, we remember Potemkin for something he really didn’t do. To be fair Potemkin was the guy that conquered most of the area that Russia and Ukraine are fighting for right now, so there’s a good argument that they should just give it all back to Turkey and be done with it.

But it came to my mind when I started thinking about the economy we find ourselves in today – in many ways, it’s a Potemkin economy. FTX®, that wonderful stealer of money and funder of Democrats? It was a financial Potemkin Village. There was nothing really there, ever. A smelly-looking Millenial with his autistic girlfriend who is so homely that she makes Greta Thunberg look like an 8.5 and the rest of the crew literally printed their own virtual currency, and then grifted their way through piles of cash from nations and celebrities and even their own employees. A Potemkin Village? Sure.

And now Elon Musk is finding that his $44 billion toy, Twitter™ is filled with fraud. First, there are fraudulent users. We don’t have the full number of bots that Tweeted™, but it wasn’t a small number.

Second, there was an algorithm that was built to push the Leftist agenda by artificially drawing people’s attention to things they weren’t organically interested in. As soon as Musk stopped the algorithm in Japan, for instance, politics stopped trending and anime and Godzilla© and sushi topped the list of things that Japanese people were actually interested in.

Third, the advertisers weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Rather than being advertisers that were interested in, oh, say, advertising to customers, they’re fleeing the platform. Why? Because they weren’t interested in selling products, they were really interested in social posturing. They’re leaving in droves – the economic engine of Twitter® appears to have been built on corporate virtue signaling.

Fourth, the employees themselves seemed to be, at a ratio of at least 75%, useless people with a huge sense of entitlement. How bad are these people? They’re upset that they won’t have free food from in-house chefs. They’ll have to pay for lunch. Maybe they’ll have burgers?

As Potemkin himself might have said, “North Crimean Canal”. Oh, sorry. Potemkin might have told those disappointed Twitterites©, “Crimea River.”

There are more examples out there. By definition, these Potemkin Companies look fine to casual observation until something breaks down. Facebook© started as the darling of the Internet. Then Zuckerberg decided that he’d spend the rest of his life staring out of the world through virtual reality, and spent $36 billion dollars on “the Internet, but with stupid goggles”.

Sure it makes sense to Mark who took the movie The Matrix as a how-to manual, but pretty much everyone else thinks it is stupid. But the scary thing for Mark is it’s making people look at what he really owns. Some folks think it’s just the next version of MySpace©, because the teens have abandoned it and it now consists of businesses trying to sell stuff, mothers trading recipes for what to do with their children’s Adderall© for a quick buzz, and the NSA desperately trying to track everyone. I guess Facebook© has a lot of servers and stuff, but is their model a Potemkin Company?

And how many other Potemkin Companies are sitting out there, in plain sight, but just not yet recognized? My bet is that there are a lot, especially in the financial sector and tech sectors. One principle that I’ve seen apply again and again is Wilder’s Rule #32: what can be built really quickly can collapse a lot quicker. If Zuck can make $100 billion in four years, he can lose it in four weeks.

The valuation of almost everything in our economy is subjective – it has value because we give it value. Amazon™ was worth $180 last year at this time. It was worth $99 yesterday. It has gone down by half. Amazon© has also announced that they’re going to lay off 10,000 employees in the next month.

Oops. And what else might be a sign of a Potemkin Economy? Valuations are built on emotion, and emotion is defined on how pretty something is. Well, at least if we lose the Potemkin Companies and the Potemkin Dollar, we still have our relationship with Catherine the Great Kamala.

Oh, crap. We’re in even worse condition than I thought."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/the-potemkin-economy/

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 11/16/22:

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! 

This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

"In today's vlog we are at Aldi and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Free Download: Barbara W. Tuchman, "The Guns of August"

“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”

by Simon Black

"The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day. It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers.

At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out. Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next three decades would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction. And then it happened.

That Sunday afternoon, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated during an official visit to Sarajevo. And the world changed forever. Five weeks later the entire continent was at war with itself. But even still, most of the ‘experts’ thought it would be a simple, speedy conflict. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, famously told his troops who were being shipped off to the front line in August 1914, “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees...” It took four years and an estimated 68 million casualties to bring the war to a close. But that was only the prelude.

Following (and even during) World War I, a series of bloody revolutionary movements took hold in Europe, including in Russia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. Then came the Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. Later, Germany sunk into one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in human history.

Communism began rapidly spreading across the world almost as quickly as the Spanish flu, often through violent fanatics who engaged in murder and arson in order to intimidate their opponents; this became known as the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States.

Of course there were some good years during the 1920s when people generally felt prosperous and happy; but it all came crashing down at the end of the decade when a severe economic depression strangled the entire world. It lasted for more than ten years, during which time the world was once again brought to an even more destructive war that didn’t end until atomic weapons obliterated the civilian populations of two Japanese cities.

Again – go back to June 1914. Who would have thought that the next 30+ years would play out so destructively? Even for the people who did predict that Europe would go to war in 1914, most leaders thought it would be over quickly. And almost no one expected it would spawn decades of chaos.

Today we’re obviously living in different times and under different circumstances. But we may be standing at a similar precipice as in 1914, staring at enormous trends that could shape our lives for years to come. Covid only scratches the surface.

We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health. They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.” Really? The same scientists who told people they couldn’t go to work, school, or church, but it was perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness? The same scientists who wanted to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but are happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns and so-called "vaccines'?

The public health consequences from this pandemic and "vaccine" will reverberate for years to come. And that doesn’t even begin to take the economic consequences into consideration. Western governments have taken on trillions of dollars in new debt this year and central banks have printed trillions more. Even with all that stimulus, however, there are still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lost their jobs, and countless businesses that have closed.

Future generations who haven’t even been born yet will spend their entire working lives paying interest on the debts that are being accumulated today. The long-term consequences of all this are incalculable.

And then there are the social trends – the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world so fast. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century. They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn, but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.

Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism. Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. You can’t even watch a football game or a TV commercial anymore without some commentary on oppression and victimization. And any intellectual dissent is met with intimidation or censorship.

In fact the largest consumer technology companies in the world have become our censors. We’re not allowed to share scientific information that doesn’t conform to the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization’s guidance. And news articles that don’t match their ideology are blocked.

Let’s not kid ourselves – these trends are not going away any time soon. It’s great to be optimistic, hope for the best, and enjoy the good years as they come. But it makes sense to at least be prepared for the possibility that we could be at the very beginning of a period of enormous instability that may last a very long time."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The Guns of August" 

"In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players."

Freely download here:

- https://epdf.pub/

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"The Quick Guide to World War 1"

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“It is history that teaches us to hope. It is well that war is 

so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”

- Robert E. Lee

But we've learned nothing from history, nothing at all, 

and our fondness, no, love of war, has only improved the weapons...

Greg Hunter, "FTX Implosion Leads to Chaos in the Streets"

"FTX Implosion Leads to Chaos in the Streets"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"According to precious metals and financial expert Bix Weir, when the FTX cryptocurrency exchange imploded, it took with it billions of dollars of investments. It now has more than a million creditors both big and small. Weir says it is the tip of the iceberg in a dying over-indebted system. Weir contends it is orders of magnitude worse than the Lehman Brothers meltdown that caused the Great Recession in 2008. Weir explains, “Does it really matter if we control the House or the Senate or the Presidency? The only thing that will matter, the only thing that will change what is going on is when the ATMs shut off and, all of a sudden, people cannot get money out of the bank. That would change things really fast. I think it will happen. All we need is one highly connected derivative bank to go down, and they all go down. They can bail out a trillion-dollar bank, but they cannot bail out a $2 quadrillion failure, and that is what is coming. The moment that hits is when everybody will say, okay, nobody is getting paid off. 

We are going to find out in about a month how many counterparties in the FTX debacle will be translated into the derivatives, which is probably 100 times bigger than what happened on FTX. Every one of those people on the FTX ledger was placing derivative bets that were hedging their crypto position. Now, their crypto positions have disappeared. The actual cryptos are no longer there, that is what was hedging this transaction. There are two sides to a derivative trade. If one side loses, they double lose. So, we could see a massive, massive fallout from the derivative mess.”

Weir also points out, “The insanity is we all believe in unbacked fiat money. That system is dying, and that’s why they are desperate to go to something else. They know the end of this system is going to be painful. That’s why they keep kicking the can down the road. Nobody really pretends it’s going to work out. You don’t hear the government saying we are going to pay off the debt. Nobody talks about that anymore. They talk more about what will we do next. Let’s invent a new kind of currency. That’s what they are talking about now because everybody has known since day one that this system will end.”

Well known politicians, sports stars and big-financial institutions were all involved with FTX. Charges are flying that FTX was a money laundering operation, a fraud and a huge public rip-off. This is a symptom of what comes at the end of a financial system. What does the end look like? Weir says, “It might be we have many currencies being used with the collapse of the system. Our government is completely corrupt. When they find out all the bad things your politicians have done to your country, to humanity and to children, good night. There is going to be chaos in the streets. Then what do you have that will work in a barter type situation until we all figure this out. I think that is where we are going. Right now, it’s going to be painful. December will be really painful, and in January and February, who knows what will be with the change in government - if there is one.”

Weir says gold, and especially silver, are extremely undervalued. He says physical supplies of both metals are disappearing. Weir says both metals will be going way up in value in the not-so-distant future." There is much more in the 34-min. interview.

https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he 

goes One-on-One with Bix Weir of RoadtoRoota.com. 

-https://rumble.com/

"Missiles Hit NATO. Emergency Meeting. This Might Be It."

Canadian Prepper, 11/15/22:

"Missiles Hit NATO. Emergency Meeting. This Might Be It."

"We're on borrowed time. Prepare while the getting's good."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Canadian Prepper, 11/15/22”

“Addendum: Don't Panic About Whats Likely Coming"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Full screen recommended.

Update 11/16/22: "Missile Fired At NATO Member 

Poland Came From Ukraine: US Officials"

"112 Million Americans Can't Afford To Get Sick As Healthcare Costs Soar 600%"

Full screen recommended.

"112 Million Americans Can't Afford To Get 

Sick As Healthcare Costs Soar 600%"

by Epic Economist

"Most Americans are just a single illness away from losing everything. We all know that by now The United States has the most expensive healthcare system in the entire world. The shocking results of a recent survey just revealed that more than 122 million Americans can’t afford to get sick because of the insane costs of medical care in the U.S. In fact, healthcare debt is the No.1 reason why individuals file for bankruptcy in this country, and it is also one of the primary reasons why the U.S. middle class is disappearing so rapidly. All over the nation, families are being financially eviscerated by extremely high health insurance premiums, ridiculously high deductibles, and very large out-of-pocket expenses that were not anticipated – and all of this should serve as a major wake-up call for all of us. If significant changes aren’t made quickly, this out-of-control health care system will destroy the U.S. middle-class all by itself.

Healthcare in America is largely an unmitigated mess, experts say. Today, over 30 million Americans don’t have health insurance, and for people to have access to the medical care, they often have to navigate through a maddeningly tortuous and obscure bureaucracy. Even those who do have insurance can face wildly expensive medical bills that lead them to take on massive amounts of debt or even declare bankruptcy. Healthcare costs are still the number one reason for personal bankruptcy in the U.S.

A new survey published by the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization West Health and Gallup found that 112 million, or 44%, of American adults, are struggling to pay for healthcare, and more than double that number, 93%, feel that the quality of the service doesn’t match the cost. “The bottom line is that Americans are increasingly getting priced out of the system and many of those who can still afford to pay don’t think they’re getting their money’s worth relative to the cost,” researchers wrote.

Healthcare costs have been on a steep rise since the 1980s. Forbes recently published an analysis from U.S. Federal Government actuaries that shows Americans have some of the highest costs in the developed world; exceeding $4.3 trillion in 2021 alone. In the 1970s, health spending totaled $74.1 billion in 1970. By 2000, health expenditures had reached about $1.4 trillion, and in 2020 the amount spent on health tripled to $4.1 trillion.

On a per capita basis, health spending has increased sharply in the last five decades, from $353 per person in 1970 to $12,531 in 2020. In 2022, health insurance for a family of four is $28,000 – easily the cost of a car. Needless to say, that can be financially crippling for most U.S. households. About 46 million U.S. citizens carry medical debt on their credit reports, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Because of the risk of facing a surprise medical bill, many people prefer not to receive any medical care at all, the West Health and Gallup survey reported. In the second quarter of 2022, 30% of Americans reported deferring medical care in the prior three months due to fear of the cost, a figure that has tripled since March 2021. But their decision can have serious consequences: The same survey found that 21% of adults said they or a household member experienced a health problem after deferring care due to cost.

“The velocity of change in the number of Americans who cannot afford health care is alarming. In a short time, we’ve witnessed healthcare affordability become an issue for most middle-income earners and even the nation’s wealthiest households. This goes to show the problem is growing larger and deeper,” the study highlights. The only way that we are going to have a thriving middle class is if we get healthcare costs under control, but unfortunately, we are stuck with this system for now. The healthcare industry is certainly not going to reform itself, and then by the way things are going in Washington, nothing is likely to get done for the foreseeable future. So our healthcare system is going to continue to deteriorate, and the citizens of the wealthiest country in the world will continue to travel to developing nations when they need important procedures to be done. A clear sign that America is failing us all."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"You Have No Idea How Bad It's Going To Get; Credit Card Debt Explodes; Beware Of Payday Loans"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 11/15/22:

"You Have No Idea How Bad It's Going To Get; 

Credit Card Debt Explodes; Beware Of Payday Loans"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"

Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Is this what will become of our Milky Way Galaxy? Perhaps if we collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years, it might. Pictured below is NGC 7252, a jumble of stars created by a huge collision between two large galaxies. The collision will take hundreds of millions of years and so is effectively caught frozen in time in the above image. The resulting pandemonium has been dubbed the Atoms-for-Peace galaxy because of its similarity to a cartoon of a large atom. 

The above image was taken by the MPG/ESO 2.2 meter telescope in Chile. NGC 7252 spans about 600,000 light years and lies about 220 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius). Since the sideways velocity of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is presently unknown, no one really knows for sure if the Milky Way will ever collide with M31."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101116.html

"What We Owe To Ourselves..."

 

“That we can never know,” answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”

- David Clement Davies

"I Am An Enemy..."

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”

- George Bernard Shaw

“The Individual vs. The Illusion Of Consensus Reality”

“The Individual vs. The Illusion Of Consensus Reality”

by Jon Rappoport

“This is such a supercharged subject, I could start from a dozen places. But let’s begin here: the individual is unique, because he is he. He is unique because he has his own ideas, because he has his own desires, because he has his own power. That power belongs to no one else. In particular, it doesn’t belong to the State. The State will try, will always try to suggest that it is granting power to the individual, but this is a lie. It’s an illusion broadcast with ill-intent. While everyone else is trying to manufacture connections to the group, under the banner of a false sense of community, the individual is going in the opposite direction.

Philip K Dick: “Insanity - to have to construct a picture of one’s life, by making inquiries of others.”

Consensus reality is the reality of sacrifice. It is coagulating energy, form, content, substance that takes on amorphous shapes studded with slots into which people can fit themselves.

The independent individual thinks what he wants to think. Over time, he keeps graduating into new, more nearly unique levels of what he wants to think. He rises above the group. He rises to his own thoughts.

There is no subject and no substance which is not infiltrated by consensus reality. Wherever you look, you will encounter it. The group is the basis of consensus reality, and the group pact extends everywhere. The group fears a sector where only individual thought can tread. That would be dangerous to the illusion. “Well, we’ve got things well in hand in most places, but over there and over here we’re not in charge. A different kind of reality pervades.” No, that doesn’t work for the group. The exceptions would blow a hole in the rule.

“Stay away from the corner of Lexington Avenue and 34th Street. Something too weird is going on there. We come in and try to inject consensus on that spot and it doesn’t work. Our “sharing” energy bounces off that corner. We may have to call in the troops to surround the place and cordon it off.” Alert! Alert! Consensus reality is breaking down in Sector 328-A! Locate the problem! This is an emergency! Bring in the news team to shore up the illusion! Turn on the hypnosis machines! Group consensus is fraying and fragmenting in Area 768-B! Call the professors and pundits! Discredit the individual! Call him a monster! Do something fast!

Consensus reality is an illusion in the sense that you can see it and I can see it, but we didn’t sign up for it. That’s the catch. Take any area of life, and I mean any, and that’s the case. Wherever there is tight consensus, perception ensues. That’s the whole point. “We, the group, aren’t fooling around. When we sign a pact among ourselves, we intend everybody to see what we decide is there to see.”

So you, the individual, can opt out. That doesn’t necessarily mean the consensus disappears; you can still see it, but you see it without accepting it. You can see the oasis in the desert, which is a mirage, but because you have your own bottle of water, you don’t have to run toward the mirage and fall down on your knees and try to drink from the pool.

Philip K. Dick: “Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… increasingly, we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated electronic mechanisms… And this is an astounding power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

The strong and free individual evolves. He doesn’t stay the same. He doesn’t know everything worth knowing today. He knows enough, but not everything. He continues to emerge with new ideas, new energy, new invention. He becomes larger. He gains more power.

When the illusion of consensus reality attains a level beyond mere slogan, it enters the realm of systems. This is its most convincing format. A system appears to be watertight. Each one of its parts has relations with the whole. This is interesting, because that mirrors what a group is. Each member is a part that connects to the whole. Consensus as a system is like a game of chess that plays the same moves over and over. Game one is the same as game two, three, four… That’s where its illusion of power comes from.

The individual, though, doesn’t proceed according to systems. He isn’t moving from one closed context to another. That’s the group. The individual may retain the same general principles over time, but what he does and thinks strikes out into new territories. Because he creates. There is no individual without creating.

Consensus is the coin of the realm. It is forced from the top, and it is signed up for at the bottom. One hand washes the other. Societies may begin through consensus, but if they have any courage, they shift focus to the job of pulling away coercive restraints on the individual. Regardless, the individual asserts his freedom. It is his to begin with, not the group’s. No one gives it to him.

American society is moving rapidly to an inverse, an upside down structure, in which freedom is looked upon as a privilege grudgingly accorded in the absence of a reason to take it away. The prevalent official attitude is: consensus must be strengthened. It must dominate the landscape.

Through vast experience, the free individual knows that consensus has no theoretical limits. Group-perceptions about the way things are can give birth to the most universally “proven objective truths.” In his explorations, the individual may even find that a demonstrated law of nature is nothing more than a consensus. And, therefore, an illusion.

The group has conception of Normal. Normal is like a message passed around, from hand to hand, and when you look at it closely, for content, it dissolves. There was really nothing there. This is similar to what happens when physicists probe further and further into matter, looking for smaller and smaller particles, and come up with an enormous amount of empty space.

The group consensus is the illusion. Finally, there is mindless hive-action covering a vacuum. This is also what occasionally happens to people who have hidebound political ideologies. The people on the Left move further and further to the Left, and the people on the Right move further and further to the Right. Finally, they are both so distant from government they meet and stare at each other in shock. At that point, they are just individuals.

From my unfinished manuscript, "The Magician Awakes": “You keep saying it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you say it out loud and sometimes it’s just a very strong thought that could cut through a melon. You repeat it over and over—”it doesn’t matter.” You’re sitting there with the most powerful thing in the universe, your imagination, and yet it doesn’t matter. New worlds are waiting for you. But you don’t pull the trigger.

“You go to meetings. What are these meetings? Who’s there? What do you talk about, the end of the world? Your problems? The conversations seem to be endless…”

“But society runs on groups! It must have groups!” And what? The individual must give in and join and belong? That’s the conclusion? I’m afraid not. Consensus reality is a cartoon that is trying to become as real as steel. What deconstructs the steel and exposes the cartoon? There is only one thing that can do that. Nothing and no one else is going to do that. The individual does it."

- www.nomorefakenews.com

"Never Be A Spectator..."

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."

- Christopher Hitchens

"Take Risk Off The Table"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 11/15/22:

"Take Risk Off The Table"

"We are getting more warnings about the economy and even Jeff Bezos is back. We are seeing a crypto collapse because of the FTX Exchange. Will crypto bring other things down as well?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Madisonville, Kentucky, USA. Thanks or stopping by!

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Geranium”

“The Geranium”

“When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled,

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,

Or a wizened aster in late September,

I brought her back in again

For a new routine -

Vitamins, water, and whatever

Sustenance seemed sensible

At the time: she’d lived

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,

Her shriveled petals falling

On the faded carpet, the stale

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!

The dumb dames shrieking half the night

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,

Me breathing booze at her,

She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me -

And that was scary -

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,

I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,

I was that lonely.”

- Theodore Roethke

"I Can't Convince Myself..."

“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”

- Kenneth Smith

“If you want to tell people the truth,

 make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

- Oscar Wilde

"Fate. Luck. Chance."

“That is life, isn’t it? Fate. Luck. Chance. A long series of what-if’s that lead from one moment to the next, time never pausing for you to catch your breath, to make sense of the cards that have been handed to you. And all you can do is play your cards and hope for the best, because in the end, it all comes back to those three basics. Fate. Luck. Chance.”

- Kelseyleigh Reber

“Unless, of course, there’s no such thing as chance… in which case, we should either - optimistically - get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might - as pessimists - give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought-decision-action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?”

- Salman Rushdie

Gregory Mannarino, "US Dollar Tumbles! 10-Year Yield Falls! Inflation Continues To Rise"

Gregory Mannarino, 11/15/22:

"US Dollar Tumbles! 10-Year Yield Falls! 

Inflation Continues To Rise"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Strange Prices At Meijer! Get It Before It's Gone!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 11/15/22:

"Strange Prices At Meijer! Get It Before It's Gone!"

"In today's vlog we are at Meijer, and are noticing some strange price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

Yeah, and the horse you rode in on, too...

"Fourth Turning Winter Of Death" (Excerpt)

"Fourth Turning Winter Of Death"

by Jim Quinn

Excerpt: “Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance.

Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” 

– Strauss & Howe, "The Fourth Turning"

"It was less than a year ago on December 16, 2021 when our dementia patient in chief was instructed by his handlers to lie, obfuscate and demonize critical thinking Americans who refused to become victims of the Big Pharma, Fauci promoted, untested, unsafe, ineffective gene therapy by declaring “we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated — for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm”. Biden’s vaccine mandates were overturned in the courts. The unvaccinated did not die from Covid. Very few people died from Covid. Some really old and infirm people on death’s doorstep died with Covid. Some very unhealthy obese people died with Covid. But even 95% of the old and unhealthy survived Covid.

Virtually no one under 70 years old died from Covid. Biden was lying. Fauci was lying. Walensky was lying. Gates was lying. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was lying. Their paid-off medical industry was lying. Their highly compensated corporate legacy media talking heads were lying. Captured politicians were lying. The entire Covid scheme was nothing more than weaponizing the annual flu through fear propaganda, a billion-dollar advertising campaign, and enacting totalitarian measures on the world as part of the Great Reset Build Back Better New World Order plot orchestrated by our globalist oligarch overlords.

Every Fourth Turning has its own dynamics, chaotic current, political nuances, general confusion, antagonists, and event driven upheaval. We are currently in the 14th year of this Crisis and Biden’s predicted winter of death for the unvaccinated didn’t happen and death and illness is striking down the vaxxed in far greater numbers than the unvaxxed. The perpetrators of the pandemic exercise to see how far people of the developed world could be pushed, abused, and turned into subservient vassals of the state are now demanding amnesty for themselves and their co-conspirators, as the consequences of their murderous escapades become impossible to cover-up and conceal.

Real data from the real world, not from their skewed manipulated models, is piling up, and despite the media’s tireless efforts to ignore, censor, and misinform, the truth is seeping out through the diligent digging of those who were right from the very outset of this scamdemic.

The complete and utter failure of these so-called vaccines has been evident from the very outset, as infections, hospitalizations, and deaths increased after the vaccines were rolled out as the savior of all mankind. The vaccines performed so atrociously the CDC had to change the definition of vaccine in order to obscure what a failure they proved to be. The narrative police can obfuscate and attempt to revise history, but the lies are all documented and available for anyone to see and hear."

Full, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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Related:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

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"The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the 

greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."

Freely download "The Vaccine Death Report" here:

- https://indepthnh.org/

○

"Genocide Is Their End Game“

Excerpt: "In a nutshell, they are to cull a large percentage of the human race and to turn the survivors into a completely controlled army of slaves who own nothing and are dictated to and tracked, traced and monitored 24/7 everywhere, even inside their own homes, which of course they will no longer own. It only starts to make sense when you understand that everything that has happened and is happening is due to a meticulously planned and sinister plot being implemented by the narrow clique of gangsters who now control our world.”

Full article here:

- https://billkloss.law.blog/

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You do want to at least know how and why you and everyone 

else who took the "vaccine" bioweapon will die, don't you?

George Galloway, Gonzalo Lira, “After Kherson”

George Galloway, Gonzalo Lira, 11/15/22:

“After Kherson”

"For the optics and the propadanda Kherson is a loss, but militarily speaking it isn’t, says Gonzalo Lira. The Russians need fewer troops to defend the new line on the Dnieper. It allows Russia to redeploy its crack troops from just holding empty ground."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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“One must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves.”

- Niccolo Machiavelli

Ukraine's walking into the mother of all cauldrons...

Once the ground's frozen in a few weeks this will end very rapidly.

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"Zelensky Visits Kherson, Hailing It As 

'The Beginning Of The End Of The War'"

Little does he want to know, but he will...

Canadian Prepper, "Holy S$!%@, He Just Confirmed WW3, Prepare For Chaos!"

Canadian Prepper, 11/14/22:

"Holy S$!%@, He Just Confirmed WW3, 

Prepare For Chaos!"

"Well, Biden just confirmed that war with China is right around the corner."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Empty Shelves, Severe Shortages And Explosive Prices Are Ahead In The Winter Of 2022"

Full screen recommended.

"Empty Shelves, Severe Shortages And Explosive 

Prices Are Ahead In The Winter Of 2022"

by Epic Economist

"Winter is only a few weeks away and the overall mood of the nation is already becoming increasingly sour. It feels like food supply chain problems never seem to end. Unfortunately, millions of Americans will soon have even more reasons to be stressed about. As we head into the colder months, a historically bad harvest season means that our store shelves will become emptier than they already are, shortages will become more widespread, and prices of many food products are about to explode in many supermarkets all across the country. We must take this crisis seriously, folks. More disruptions continue to emerge in our food systems, and this is going to cause a lot of pain and suffering for our population.

This holiday season is expected to significantly exacerbate the shortages we’re seeing at grocery stores. According to the Wall Street Journal, new disruptions are popping up every week as grocers battle supply chain challenges that some executives said are “as bad as what they saw in spring 2020 when hoarding left holes in stocks of some staples”.

“Industry insiders say new problems are arising weekly, driven by shortages of labor and commodities. Groceries remain scarce as some food companies anticipate product stockouts lasting into 2023. The supply of a wide range of goods is running short and logistical challenges are compounding for many retailers,” the report exposed.

At this point, grocery stores are rushing to ensure supplies and ordering more food like crazy. But there are so many companies trying to do the same at the same time that even the largest U.S. food distributors simply cannot fulfill all of the orders. A recent Bloomberg report reveals that distribution giant Sysco, North America’s largest wholesale food distributor, is turning away customers in some areas where demand is exceeding capacity. The company is “reporting difficulties in fulfilling orders as shortages weigh on the supply chain.”

Sysco CEO Kevin Hourican says people should brace for another round of price increases and that food inflation is about to soar even higher: “The prices for key goods such as chicken, pork and meat are climbing amid tight supplies. And if intermediate and final wholesale prices are rising, just wait until they emerge on the consumer side,” he said.

The problem of widespread food shortages is a result of many failures in the chain of supply, and one of the most recent catalysts to this crisis is the ongoing diesel crisis, which has prices soaring and reserves rapidly drying up.

The executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, Mike Steenhoek, says that after visiting a number of farmers, the consensus is that diesel costs are hurting their profit margins, as well as their day-to-day operations, and they also warn that our domestic agricultural production has been particularly hard hit by this crisis over the past year, causing harvests to fall well below expectations.

In fact, the USDA just reported that levels of corn, wheat, and soybeans hit their lowest level in almost a decade. Similarly, a new exposé released by The Guardian uncovered that U.S. farmers experienced some of the toughest farming conditions in decades as a once-in-a-millennium megadrought combined with higher fertilizer and diesel prices, and resulted in losses exceeding $2 billion.

On top of all that, food inflation is predicted to hit between 15% and 20% this winter. Data from the American Farm Bureau Federation shows grocery bills are rising at a much faster pace than what consumers can pay, with 76% of Americans saying their family has changed how they buy food due to the relentless rise in prices.

The era that is ahead of us is going to be devastating for our nation. If you don’t have a plan yet to survive the challenges we’re about to face, you should probably make one now because, as the experts said, more problems “are arising weekly”."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Challenge From Heaven”

Full screen mode recommended.

2002, “Challenge From Heaven”

"A Very Deep Look to the Heavens"

"The Hubble Deep Field:

The Most Important Image Ever Taken"

"In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope took the image of a millenium, an image that shows our place in the universe. Anyone who understands what this image represents, is forever changed by it."- YouTube/NASA

Full screen recommended.

Full screen recommended.

"It helps to put things in perspective here on our frenetic little planet with a look at this extraordinarily powerful and moving video of the Hubble Space Telescope mapping of the Universe, whose known size is 78 billion light years across. The video of the images is the equivalent of using a "time machine" to look into the past to witness the early formation of galaxies, perhaps less than one billion years after the universe's birth in the Big Bang.

The video includes mankind's deepest, most detailed optical view of the universe called the Hubble Deep Field (HDF). One of the stunning images was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) for ten consecutive days. Representing a narrow "keyhole" view stretching to the visible horizon of the universe, the HDF image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime located 75 feet away. Though the field is a very small sample of the heavens, it is considered representative of the typical distribution of galaxies in space because the universe, statistically, looks largely the same in all directions. Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution.

Most of the galaxies are so faint (nearly 30th magnitude or about four-billion times fainter than can be seen by the human eye) they have never before been seen by even the largest telescopes. Some fraction of the galaxies in this menagerie probably date back to nearly the beginning of the universe. "The variety of galaxies we see is amazing. In time these Hubble data could turn out to be the double helix of galaxy formation. We are clearly seeing some of the galaxies as they were more than ten billion years ago, in the process of formation," said Robert Williams, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute Baltimore, Maryland. "As the images have come up on our screens, we have not been able to keep from wondering if we might somehow be seeing our own origins in all of this."

- http://www.dailygalaxy.com/

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"A Universe of 2 Trillion Galaxies"

"In 2016, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal and led by Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham using 3D modeling of images collected over 20 years by the Hubble Space Telescope concluded that there are more than two trillion galaxies in the observable universe."

- https://phys.org/news/

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"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of three billion Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, 2 trillion galaxies like this. And in all of that... and perhaps more, only one of each of us."

- "Dr. Leonard McCoy"

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert: Three Things Are About To Happen, And It's Already Starting!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/14/22:

"Alert: Three Things Are About To Happen, 

And It's Already Starting!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Douglas Macgregor, "War in Ukraine: Quiet Before the Storm?"

Full screen recommended.

Douglas Macgregor, 11/14/22:

"War in Ukraine: Quiet Before the Storm?"